


Cookies and Cuddles

by Paycheckgurl



Category: Mystery Science Theater 3000
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Christmas Cookies, Christmas Fluff, Christmas Movies, Cuddles, Established Relationship, Fluff, Making Out, Multi, Netflix has a lot of cheesey Christmas movies to sort through, OT3, Polyamory, Post-Season/Series 12
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-24
Updated: 2018-12-24
Packaged: 2019-09-21 08:02:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17039903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Paycheckgurl/pseuds/Paycheckgurl
Summary: Kinga isn’t very good at celebrating the Christmas holiday. Max and Jonah are here to help.





	Cookies and Cuddles

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SylaBub](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SylaBub/gifts).



> Merry Christmas, Sylabub! Hope you enjoy! 
> 
> I’ve written for most of the Kinga/Max/Jonah Ot3 combos at this point in some way or another, but never all three of them at once. Time to correct that. 
> 
> Also apparently I have a thing for Kinga with cookies. Last Christmas exchange I had her awkwardly giving them away to Mike in a brief scene. Here...well you’ll see. I’m just going to roll with it. 
> 
> Established relationship because I’m too lazy to come up with backstory. 
> 
> Thank you Speccy for beta-ing!

“What is that? What is this?” 

Kinga looked around at the flour covered kitchen in Moon 13, and the two apron-clad men carefully frosting what looked suspiciously like gingerbread men. She placed her hands firmly on her hips. 

Kinga’s entire relationship with the Christmas holiday boiled down to the exploitable and the dreaded. 

The exploitable part of the holiday had most recently taken the form of  _ The Christmas That Almost Wasn’t.  _ Even if “recently” was stretching the definition of the word a bit—it had been a few years and a few very significant relationship dynamic changes with Jonah and Max since that episode. 

This year there was no Christmas episode to be filmed for the show. They were between season airings, and one Christmas movie with Jonah was probably enough—both Joel and Mike only got one full on Christmas movie a piece, and she had promised to lay off the brain breaking ones a bit. There was no exploitable reason to feature any Christmastime merriment this year. Not unless she finally perfected liquid recording technology that wasn’t streaming based. 

The dreaded would come next week, a twice forwarded envelope containing an invitation to Grandma Pearl’s that might not have even been for her. And the inherent awkwardness of a party at Castle Forrester. 

This, this cookie thing, was neither to be dreaded nor exploited. It was just simply confusing. 

“Oh crap, Kinga!” 

Jonah’s neat red piping spilled over his gingerbread man, and he somehow managed to crumble part of the man’s head. He looked like he had red frosting blood smeared across a cracked ginger head injury. 

“So...uh... Max invited me down here. We’re baking.” 

“Baking,” repeated Kinga skeptically. 

“Gingerbreads!” Max exclaimed. 

“Why?” 

“Because...it’s Christmas?” 

Kinga crossed her arms. “These will be rock solid by the time they get to Grandma Pearl’s.”

“That’s because they aren’t for your grandmother,” said Jonah. 

“Then why? If the boneheads want to be festive during filming downtime they can do it themselves. They work for us, not the other way around you know.” 

Max rolled his eyes. “See Jonah, I told you she wouldn’t get this.” 

“Kinga,” said Jonah. “These cookies are for you. We’re making them for you because it’s Christmas… I mean I guess more accurately it’s December and we’re still a few weeks out from Christmas, but it’s Christmas spirit time. We’re not doing this because it will help the show’s ratings. And not so we can use them as a token to impress your family. I just thought it would be fun to make them, and give them to you to make you happy. Because at Christmas time you’re supposed to make your loved ones happy. And I mean, we kind of love you so…” 

Jonah had that big puppy dog smile on as he said that. The one that when combined with that yellow jumpsuit, gave way to the image of a particular breed of puppy dog. A big ole golden retriever. 

“I know you don’t really do the Christmas thing,” said Max. “Not for yourself. But...I know you really like ginger cookies when it’s not the holiday season, and look! Jonah make little gingerbread us! This one has a purple frosting lab coat like yours and red frosting hair! He even made your hair sticks!”

There were little piped bones on the hair with little bits of white frosting. The little ginger her was scowling. Just like she was scowling at it as she sized it up. It took a lot of effort not to just snap its little ginger neck off for further inspection of that expression. 

“You...don’t actually like this? Do you?” asked Jonah. 

Jonah looked her with big expectant eyes, and Max’s facial expression was slowly deflating like a large rubber ball someone had taken the tiniest of sewing pins to. 

Kinga playfully flicked the smallest bit of flour in the general direction of her boyfriends. 

“I love you idiots,” she declared. 

Max’s face suddenly went from being a deflated beach ball to lighting up like... well, seasonally appropriate as it was, a Christmas tree. Jonah was a bit more preoccupied with wiping flour off of his glasses.

“I know I kind of suck at being affectionate sometimes and well, argh,  but I do honestly love you...” 

She paused for half a second. 

“...for some reason.” She added hastily. 

Because even while admitting that she had feelings, she was going to attempt and hide those feelings. 

“And I really love that you did this for me. Even if you are a couple of romantic sappy  _ nerds, _ ” she added. 

And then she grabbed a glob of uncooked cookie dough because she could, and if these two dorks weren’t eating the cookie dough they were doing it wrong. 

“Look, I know I suck at Christmas,” she said. “Grandpa Pearl never liked including me in it, and when Dad was alive it was mostly about dodging spending time with her, or watching him and Frank trying to kill each other again. Or torturing Joel with  _ Santa Claus Conquers The Martians.  _ Or torturing Mike with  _ Santa Claus _ …”

“A picture is starting to emerge here…” said Jonah. 

“ _ The point is,  _ I know I’m not really good at celebrating this holiday. The fact you like it, Max, was always baffling to me, because you were around for about half of that. But yeah... I really appreciate that you went out of your way for me. The thing is though...I kind of don’t have anything to pay you back with.”

“Kinga, you don’t need to pay us back,” said Max. “Like Jonah said, we did this because we love you. Christmas isn’t about one upping each other.” 

“Yeah but...argh, this is already too sappy, don’t make me say it.” 

“Say what?” said Jonah in a bit of a leading voice. Kinga suspected he might be enjoying this just a tad too much. 

“That I want to do something nice to make you two feel good! Okay! Sheesh!” 

Max’s eyes began to water a bit. 

“Oh Kinga, that’s just so sweet!” said Max. 

“Tell you what,” said Jonah. “Help me finish these last few gingerbread men, and then you can do something nice for us by joining us in a massive cuddle pile.” 

Kinga “helped” with the last batch of gingerbread. Even if “helping” was relative. She ate more cookie dough. Max rolled out the dough and cut out the cookies. Jonah took over most of the piping because that kind of annoyingly detailed art stuff was kind of his thing. 

The warm gingerbread men were delicious straight out of the oven, and Kinga wasn’t ashamed to simply grab a few off the tray and glob frosting on top of them without any particular design. They did say they made them for her, so they couldn’t get that mad about it, right?

Jonah saved a few on a paper plate with the intention of sending them back to the Satellite of Love for the bots, including some that were carefully carved into the shape of the robots themselves. Kinga resisted the urge to dunk the Crow one in milk and eat it while no one was looking. She managed to restrain herself based on the fact that if the robot got mad he didn’t get a cookie they’d all be hearing about it forever.

Jonah insisted on cleaning up himself and not having the boneheads take over, which took forever and seemed counterproductive, and then the three made their way to Kinga’s bedroom. 

Her purple canopy bed had been described as “extra” by Jonah the first time he’d been invited in there. And while he wasn’t exactly wrong about that, she’d actually shown a lot of restraint with the decor. The bed was the only true statement piece in the otherwise sparsely decorated room. She could have slapped her insignia everywhere if she wanted to. Instead, she opted for purple teddy bears lining the comforter. 

The comforter was exceptionally warm and exceptionally, well,  _ comforting _ in the chilly, dark, moon environment. The three often found while they were down here that the bed was simply too comfy and that getting out of it was difficult. The addition of cuddles almost made it impossible. 

The three hopped onto the bed. Jonah first with his long legs, Kinga with a practiced leap, and Max with a helping hand up from Jonah. 

As the three arranged themselves in the cuddle pile Jonah surfed through Kinga’s laptop which was on the bedside table. 

“We need seasonally appropriate background noise,” he declared. 

“I invented a machine that blocks seasonal background noise,” said Kinga. 

“I think he means a movie,” said Max. “I know you’re okay with holiday movies.” 

Sure enough, Jonah had Netflix open. “Hmm,  _ A Christmas Prince  _ is so last year. But there’s a sequel now? And then there’s the Vanessa Hudgens one that’s in the same spirit but also basically just a Christmas rip-off of celebrated cinematic masterpiece  _ Barbie as the Princess and Pauper _ . Hmm,  _ The Grinch  _ but it’s the Jim Carrey version. I don’t want to judge a book by its cover but you might want to bookmark  _ A Dogwalker’s Christmas Tale  _ for the show…” 

Max stifled a laugh. “I’m just upset they didn’t bother to spell it ‘tail’. The pun is right there.”

“Jonah, I see you hovering over the  _ Neo Yokio _ holiday special,” said Kinga. “Don’t even think about it.”

“Who me, never,” he said unconvincingly, before he continued scrolling. “ _ Red Christmas  _ is up my alley but I know Max doesn’t really do horror…” 

Kinga gave in and snatched the laptop from her boyfriend. 

“I’m making an executive decision here.  _ Love, Actually.  _ It’s cute and let’s be real, Netflix is the least important part of Netflix and Chill.” 

“I will literally pay you to say that to a Netflix exec at our next renewal meeting,” said Max. 

Kinga tossed a small throw pillow at him. 

The three rearranged themselves and commenced the cuddle pile. Kinga liked to try and be the big spoon. That worked with Max, but was laughably awkward with Jonah. The unspoken compromise the three had reached was that Kinga would cuddle Max, and Jonah would cuddle them both from behind. There were small kisses on the crooks of each others necks, and deep, deep cuddle hugs. Despite Kinga’s joke about Netflix and chill, things didn’t quite get steamy yet. Kinga promised cuddles and she was going to deliver on that promise. More warm hugs and laying there as the movie changed from story about love to story about love. Before they knew it the credits were rolling. 

Max sighed happily, “I’m comfy. Can I just stay here until it’s actually Christmas in a few weeks? We can skip Pearl’s party.” 

“Hmmm. That’s tempting,” said Jonah. “Although I’m slightly afraid of what Tom and Crow are going to do the satellite if I’m gone that long. Gyps can only hold them off for so long.” 

Despite Jonah’s token protest he was hugging Kinga and Max tighter, refusing to let go. 

Kinga couldn’t help but hum happily in response. 

“Alright, fine, all the cuddles. But I’m going to make a request here. Jumpsuit off, Heston.” 

“I didn’t know you found my undershirt so sexy,” he said. 

“That too,” she said  “Max, lab coat and shirt off,” she made it a point to be specific this time. 

As their makeout session commenced Kinga found herself again thinking about the upcoming holiday. Maybe it wasn’t so bad after all if she was focusing on the two people who she loved the most. And maybe she could get into the spirit by stringing up approximately all the mistletoe up in here. Her silent plotting was interrupted as Max and Jonah’s hands shifted themselves to a particularly pleasurable location. Yep, this but with mistletoe. She could definitely learn to embrace this holiday thing. 


End file.
